VaultWiki News

We are pleased to announce today's release of VaultWiki 4 Gamma 7, now available for download. Gamma 7 is primarily a maintenance release, but resolving some performance issues and regressions of VaultWiki 3 behavior that has gone addressed so far. We intend to continue resolving such long-standing regressions over the next few releases.

A small number of high-priority bugs have been resolved, most notably:

New pages entering the moderation queue lose their titles and text

BB-Code Caching

With Gamma 7, the contents of wiki pages and comments are finally saved in a BB-Code cache for later, so that the parser doesn't need to re-interpret the BB-Code every time the page is loaded. Once the cache is primed, this results in significant improvements to PHP page generation times, typically 15 - 25%.

It should be noted that VaultWiki uses a different BB-Code caching system than either vBulletin or XenForo, due to the potential complexity of a wiki page and the information that must be stored. Because of this, any maintenance tools that affect the forum's BB-Code cache will not automatically affect the wiki's cache too.

HTML5

With Gamma 7, VaultWiki 4 now serves all wiki pages as HTML5 documents, regardless of the default doctype of the forum platform. Due to mixing of doctypes in vBulletin, this change causes a known issue with VaultWiki pages, as well as some forum pages, not fully validating as either XHTML 1.0 or HTML5 when using third-party validation tools. However, this change has allowed us to implement other features that are only available under HTML5, so we believe this has been an acceptable trade-off.

Microdata

With the change to HTML5, VaultWiki 4 now makes full use of microdata in wiki pages and related documents. Microdata is a form of metadata that is embedded within the content of a web page and that many search engines now use to improve their search results. The additional metadata provided by microdata in VaultWiki 4 should result in increased relevance scores, more detailed search listings, and theoretically, higher ranked pages.

Page Rank

VaultWiki 3 performed remarkably well at telling search engines which wiki pages and related wiki documents were important and preventing search engines from indexing or even accessing unimportant pages. Before Gamma 7, VaultWiki 4 regressed in this department, allowing search engines access anywhere that allowed guests and relying only on sitemaps to tell search engines what pages were important.

This was a serious problem for SEO, because your most important wiki pages could be indexed together with trivial ones like the History tab or a Special page. In the search results, a user might be presented with both, the trivial one, or neither, since the perceived importance of the important wiki page was diluted by the presence of the other results.

As of Gamma 7, VaultWiki 4 should now even outperform its predecessor. Not only does VaultWiki now restrict crawling to actual wiki pages, but it restricts crawling to wiki pages that actually have some form of content. If a wiki page is empty, has no child pages, and no comments, it will now just be ignored by search engines.

In addition to this, a new Area setting lets you choose whether to allow indexing of any content within an area at all. So for example, if you store all your stubs or templates in one area, you can prevent search engines from seeing them at all.

CSS Changes

Before Gamma 7, all of the CSS for wiki pages was stored in one style template called vw.css. Over several releases, the template quickly became long and unwieldy, making simple CSS modifications difficult for users (and developers). If a modification was made, it was likely invalidated in the next upgrade. This was particularly a pain point for vBulletin users, who would have to manually update their templates again.

In Gamma 7, we have separated vw.css into several smaller templates that are named based on what they deal with, e.g. vw-popup.css deals with pop-up menus and vw-tab.css deals with the styling of wiki tabs. This should not only make finding the CSS you want to change a little more straightforward, but if you do modify vw-tab.css, a change in the next release to vw-popup.css won't affect what you did.

That said, direct modification of the CSS should no longer be necessary. Gamma 7 introduces the vw-additional.css template, which has no default content. This template will always be loaded after all other CSS, so you can make any customizations by adding them to this template. For vBulletin users, this is ideal to modifying vBulletin's own additional.css, because vw-additional.css is only loaded when wiki styles get used.

The separation of the CSS allows loading portions of the code modularly. On many pages, this means that the number of bytes transferred for wiki CSS is lower than earlier versions of VaultWiki 4, which loaded all CSS on every page. This will typically mean reduced bandwidth and page render times compared to earlier releases.

We've also added a CSS caching system which is arguably superior to traditional style-modified-time CSS caching, such as vBulletin's CSS roll-up system. At page access time, Gamma 7 loads an uncached version of the CSS based on what templates are needed for the current page, rather than a pre-defined roll-up, and caches this result. Then, if the same templates are used in a subsequent request by any user, the cached version is used. Subsequent requests are able to load the CSS file directly rather than proxying through PHP again, which means the overhead of using PHP is eliminated for most CSS requests and any server-side performance benefits of using static assets can be realized.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 7 should be usable on vBulletin-based and XenForo-based production sites.

We maintain the Gamma status due to the significant style changes that still require more real-world testing.

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 6 has been released today and is now available for download. Gamma 6 is primarily a maintenance release, resolving a number of regressions and bugs that were introduced in Gamma 5, as well as issues from earlier versions.

A handful of data loss and showstopper issues have been resolved, most notably:

Even though the terms would apply to any download action regardless of version, VaultWiki 4 Gamma 6 is the first new version released under our new License Agreement. If you still need to familiarize yourself with the important changes, you can read our announcement here: https://www.vaultwiki.org/articles/149/

Aside from a few new options and fixed missing features like Multi-Quote support in XenForo, there are no new features in this release.

Style Changes

However, there have been significant changes to the default style for the wiki. In the past, we used pre-made images as status icons for various content within the wiki, but as of Gamma 6, status icons are now represented by font-based icons from the Font-Awesome font.

This results in a lighter download package due to fewer images, as well as less work customizing since you would no longer need to customize PSDs and export every possible icon combination. Status combinations are now handled entirely by CSS classes, which means you can edit the size, color, or face of an icon simply by modifying 1 or 2 lines of the CSS. Using the same techniques, you can even apply custom icons for different areas or wiki pages.

Development Changes

Some users may have noticed that there was an atypical delay in the release of Gamma 6. VaultWiki 4 Gamma 6 is our first release under our new development practices. As the first of its kind, we had to build a number of tools that we did not have before, and this took extra time.

We have moved to Mercurial for version control, which allows us to do more development in Integrated Development Environments where it is easier to catch simple errors. As mentioned in some previous postings, we also have improved the backend of our download system so that we can continue patching older releases while we develop new ones. This was previously a painstaking, error-prone process.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 6 should be usable on vBulletin-based and XenForo-based production sites.

We maintain the Gamma status due to new features that will be added soon and still require more real-world testing.

The annual and monthly options do not require any buyer commitment or billing contracts, although automated billing is now offered as a convenience.

There is also no longer different pricing up-front compared to renewals, and there is no longer a difference in pricing between active and expired licenses. You'll notice that this means that the initial pricing for VaultWiki subscribed annually is reduced compared to the previous pricing, while the cost of renewing has increased.

While the terms of the License Agreement have significantly changed to reflect these options, the basic terms remain the same: once you have VaultWiki downloaded and installed, you can let your license lapse and still keep your installation, with some minor exceptions.

With the $10/month offering, this theoretically means you can pay only $10 and get a fully-loaded product.

And with the Lifetime offering, you can pay $150 and never worry about renewing again. You would also never have to worry about us dropping the offering or charging for a new version -- under the current license terms we would have to upgrade you anyway.

As before, you can pay to renew only when you think an update is worth renewing to get, but for users who don't want the hassle of keeping track, we now offer automatic billing through PayPal:

Automatic Renewals

We have recently upgraded our shopping cart and license management console (more on that later), so now we have the potential for great new functionality to make your life easier, like setting up your license to automatically renew.

This adds convenience for both parties, and as a thank you to users who set up Automatic Renewals, we'll be giving them 10% off every automatically applied renewal.

Branding Removal and Other Add-on Services

To follow suit with the new VaultWiki license models, the options for branding removal have also been updated. Branding Removal is now applied as a paid option on top of VaultWiki licenses, and it affects the price of licensing as follows:

Annual @ +$60/year

Monthly @ +10/month

Lifetime @ +$150

To reduce any added complication in the renewal system, new Branding Removals cannot combine with VaultWiki licenses on a different subscription frequency. To keep Branding Removals and licenses synchronized, the cart goes so far as to pro-rate Branding Removals that are added on dates other than the first day of the subscription.

But there is a EULA caveat to using subscription-based licenses with Branding Removal. If your subscription lapses, you must either re-apply the branding or renew immediately.

How Existing Licenses Are Treated

Existing license holders under the old system are automatically converted to the Annual subscription, since that's how their licenses have renewed historically anyway.

However, if those same holders have already purchased Branding Removal for their license, the Branding Removal portion of the license is treated as a Lifetime license. This way the original terms of the Branding Removal they already have are not changed.

It is no longer possible to purchase Branding Removal or License Renewal without designating a target license prior to purchase. Over the next several days, we will be investigating individual cases where unused Branding Removals or License Renewals might still exist in some users' accounts, so that they can be properly applied to a license and the service is not forever lost.

While we have been hinting for many months that price changes were imminent, no specific date was announced ahead of time. For this reason, we will be refunding users the $9.98 difference for new licenses purchased between March 27, 2014 and May 26, 2014.

Temporary Regressions

Before going into the new functionality, I want to first note that several functions that customers may have been used to will be temporarily unavailable while they are updated to make use of the new functionality. This process may take up to a week for some items.

Payments through 2Checkout.com will be unavailable until the cart integration for that service has been updated.

VaultWiki Lite, the corresponding Lite-to-Premium Upgrade and Ad Removal options, and Branding Removal for VaultWiki Lite will be unavailable until those services can be updated. It is still possible to download VaultWiki Lite from the other third-party sources, and if you need one of these services in the mean time, a staff member will be able to assist you by manually setting it up.

VaultWiki 3.0.20 PL 1, which has been an End-of-Life version since January, will be temporarily unavailable for download until it is converted to the new download system.

New Shopping Cart

We now have brand new shopping cart software installed. This new software is built completely on top of VaultWiki, scripted using VaultWiki's generic libraries, and with the ability to use wiki pages as product description and review pages. Aside from the implications this has for the future of VaultWiki, this is a huge step forward in making our own service vBulletin-independent.

The new shopping cart uses pre-defined product primitives to construct various products using a scripting technique called mix-ins. We hope that this will evolve into an offering that will allow anyone to make both physical and digital wiki-based products with minimal effort.

It also uses an abstraction layer to access different payment gateways generically, which will make it much easier to support different payment options in a timely manner than we could with our previous system.

While most users won't benefit from this immediately, it is technically feasible to add an unlimited number of coupon codes to a transaction, rather than the 1 coupon that was supported previously.

Aside from the functionality of it, the cart has also been given a new look and feel, with a graphical payment progress indicator, more detailed product options, and more modern web technologies like AJAX to prepare and submit transactions for payment.

For the most part, transactions and shopping carts from the previous software are incompatible with the new cart. However, we have tried to import as much transaction data as possible so that order histories are intact. Unfortunately, however, due to changes in the products themselves and some types no longer being offered, existing cart contents have been cleared to avoid conflicts.

New Members Area

In conjunction with the shopping cart, we also have a brand new members area. The members area, also based on VaultWiki-script, is tightly integrated with the shopping cart. The same product primitives used by the cart help to create the content users have access to in the members area.
We believe that the new Members area is more intuitive, with like products and services grouped together under different menu options, with improved presentation of license options, and with context-based preference settings.

You will finally be able to glance at your order history, and (soon) be able to view the full details of old orders. The Members area now tracks services that have been used recently. So for those users who were unsure whether their Upgrade Service submitted successfully, it will now appear as a Recent Service.

You can use the Members area to manage subscriptions for your licenses, change subscription frequency, renew them, or configure automatic billing.

And finally the Download function. This will look almost exactly the same as it did before, but it's one of the functions that had the most updated in the background. For a while now, we have used a proprietary version control system to store and serve the data through the Members area. This avenue has allowed us to offer fast downloads from file-system caches while also minimizing disk usage, but further improvements have been made.

A number of back-end processes were completely redesigned for the new Download function. We are now able to more easily add or remove files from the download, and from an administrative standpoint, it is easier and less server intensive to flag those files and retrieve those files based on various flags.

In the old Members area, it was typical for a new download to take between 15-20 seconds to compile and download. In the new Members area, this entire process now usually takes no more than 2-3 seconds.

Closing Remarks

In all, we believe the new Shopping Cart and Members area will be a welcome improvement. It has already undergone significant QA testing, but there are probably still issues that need to be worked out, or that will start appearing as we start addressing the regressions mentioned earlier.

For the time being, please continue to post issues with the cart or members area as web site bugs rather than VaultWiki bugs.

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 5 was released moments ago. Gamma 5 is primarily a maintenance release with a significant number of bug fixes.

Most notably, Gamma 5 fixes several problems with the subscription functionality that could have been considered violations of CAN-SPAM. For this reason, we strongly recommend that all users running earlier versions of VaultWiki 4 upgrade as soon as they are able.

We would like to remind everyone that since VaultWiki 4 and VaultWiki Lite are now developed as one core product, any bug fixes that are relevant to both the full version and the Lite version are automatically applied to Gamma 5 of VaultWiki Lite.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 5 should be usable on vBulletin-based and XenForo-based production sites.

We maintain the Gamma status due to new features that will be added soon and still require more real-world testing.

Public Members Tab and Lite Services

To expand our commitment to VaultWiki Lite, all registered members of this site now have access to the Members tab. This tab was previously only visible to licensed users.

Now any user, licensed or not, will find the option to claim a VaultWiki Lite license by accessing this tab and clicking "Claim License." We ask for the URL where the product will be installed, but since VaultWiki Lite is a free product, this information will only be used for support tickets and other services, rather than for license validation.

Users who download VaultWiki Lite from our web site, rather than vbulletin.org or xenforo.com, will now be able to purchase Branding Removal, Ad Removal, Upgrade Services, and more for their Lite installations.

Today marks a special milestone in the VaultWiki 4 life-cycle. However, while Gamma 4 is available today, on the surface it looks like just another Gamma release with bug fixes and a handful of small features added. But alongside Gamma 4, we finally have a Lite Version based on VaultWiki 4.

Upgrade Warning

Please note, if you are upgrading from previous versions of VaultWiki 4, you may have to modify your vault/config.php file or the Lite version will be automatically activated on your install.

After the copyright block in vault/config.php, add the following:

Code:

if (!defined('VW_IS_LITE')) define('VW_IS_LITE', false);

If you want to try the Lite version without downloading a different package, you can set VW_IS_LITE to true, but you must set it back to false whenever you run the upgrade script or you risk damaging your installation.

VaultWiki Lite

VaultWiki Lite, for those who are unfamiliar, is the free version of VaultWiki that you can download to try out before purchasing a license, or if you want just a very basic wiki. VaultWiki Lite is stripped of many extra features and configuration options, but leaving the most important abilities to post and edit articles and review previous changes.

We definitely took our time deciding how to implement this Lite release. Ever since VaultWiki 4 was first released to the public, people have been asking for a try-before-you-buy option. But we made some big mistakes with the Lite version for VaultWiki 3 back in 2010, and we wanted to learn from those mistakes.

Unlike VaultWiki 3 Lite, VaultWiki 4 Lite will be an officially supported and actively developed product. Using the development environment we created in 2011 to test VaultWiki 4 on different platforms, we are now able to make changes to both VaultWiki 4 and VaultWiki Lite simultaneously. This means that VaultWiki Lite is not a code fork from the main product line, but is actually the same product with some modules missing from the download package.

So whenever a bug is fixed in the full version of VaultWiki for paid licensees, that bug is also fixed in VaultWiki Lite. If a new feature is added, and we decide it is okay to also give away for free, we simply give our exporter the okay to include that module in Lite.

There are also hidden options in the full version for customers who are curious how the Lite version differs from theirs, but who don't want to reinstall to have a look.

Link Previews

Another one of the favorite features from VaultWiki 3 is finally back: hover over a wiki link and get a preview of that wiki page.

We've gone a few steps further with the feature this time, however. If the link points to a redirect, the preview follows the redirect so that you see a snippet of the final content. Additionally, if either the link itself or the redirect points to a specific section on the target page, the preview will show the content from that section.

File Health Check

VaultWiki 4 now supports your forum software's built-in functionality for checking file integrity. You can see if you have extra files on your installation that don't belong there, and you can see if someone has edited your wiki files without your knowledge.

Other Changes

There are several small new features in Gamma 4 including the ability to make the first post when you are starting a new discussion. Previously you would have to start the discussion, save it, go to quick reply, and post your first comment. You can now open the discussion with a first post at the same time.

We've made it easier for multiple-language wikis to setup their languages. When you edit the language in the Admin Panel, typing the language code will automatically select the icon it thinks fits best. If you think you have a better idea, you can choose your own icon from a drop-down list. Most common language codes are supported by the automated script.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 4 should be usable on vBulletin-based and XenForo-based production sites.

We maintain the Gamma status due to new features that are added or will be added soon and still require more real-world testing.

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 3 is now available for licensed members to download. Gamma 3 includes a number of new features, improvements, and other bug fixes.

XSS Vector on vBulletin-based Installs

First and foremost, Gamma 3 resolves a potential cross-site scripting vector that affects vBulletin-compatible releases. If you are running VaultWiki on XenForo, this vulnerability does NOT apply to you. This vulnerability affects VaultWiki 4 versions only. VaultWiki 3 is unaffected.

We highly recommend that vBulletin users upgrade to Gamma 3 as soon as they are able. This vector allows forum users to post arbitrary HTML and Javascript in your wiki, and it is relatively easy to exploit. Although some wikis might not be vulnerable, most live installations of VaultWiki 4 are.

Because previous releases are vulnerable, they have been removed from the download area to protect users from installing them or learning to exploit the vulnerability. Due to our End-of-Life and patching policies, and since non-Release Candidate releases cannot be patched by our system, any vBulletin-based forums using VaultWiki 4 will need a current license in order to obtain a patched download.

If your license is expired, we recommend disabling your wiki by placing it in maintenance mode until you are able to renew your license.

Improved Performance

Gamma 3 improves VaultWiki's performance in a number of respects.

Disable Unused Features

A new section has been added to the Admin Panel's Structures tab, called "Content Types." This section allows admins to disable wiki features they do not intend to use, which prevents the wiki from initializing unused features, and prevents users from trying to access them anyway.

Disable the Sidebar

You can now completely disable the wiki sidebar. Previously you could hide the sidebar by disabling every block individually, but VaultWiki would still run a number of processes intended to find enabled blocks and combine them. The new setting prevents VaultWiki from processing sidebar data entirely.

Lower Memory Usage

Prior to Gamma 3, the larger the wiki grew, the more memory it required to keep track of what pages existed or not. VaultWiki uses this information when routing pages and creating wiki links. In Gamma 3, the memory footprint of these caches have been reduced by about 75%, which means more room to grow.

Faster Auto-Links

Using a number of software engineering tricks, the process of discovering auto-links in large amounts of text, in multiple text blocks, and for very large wikis have been drastically improved. The auto-linker now has several discovery methods at its disposal, and it can choose the most efficient option for the current request on the fly. Additionally, it performs some pre-filtering on the search queries rather than on the result set. Combined, these changes have reduced auto-link processing time between 50% - 90%, depending on the situation.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 3 should be usable on both vBulletin-based and XenForo-based production sites.

We maintain the Gamma status due to new features that are added or will be added soon and still require more real-world testing.

VaultWiki 4.0.0 Gamma 2 is now available. Gamma 2 is a maintenance release that contains a handful of bug fixes, many for bugs that were introduced in Gamma 1.

Other Changes

XenForo users should also see a significant improvement to the styling of wiki pages. Not only is the wiki itself better-looking, but it also makes full use of the existing XenForo Color Palette for its custom Style Properties. This means less work fine-tuning the wiki when forum admins install a new style on their forums.

Release Notes

VaultWiki 4 Gamma 2 should be usable on vBulletin-based production sites.

Since this is a Gamma release, we do not recommend installing VaultWiki 4 Gamma 2 on XenForo-based production sites at this time.